The giant panda Tian Tian. It is due to arrive in Edinburgh with partner Yang Guang. Photograph: Giant Panda Conservation and Res/PA

Two giant pandas, the first to live in Britain for nearly 20 years, are expected to arrive in Edinburgh on Sunday after Chinese officials finally approved their new home at the city's zoo.

The pair, Tian Tian and Yang Guang, are due to land at Edinburgh airport on Sunday afternoon on board a special FedEx flight from Sichuan province in China before being whisked to a redesigned enclosure in the zoo, complete with pool, cave and bulletproof glass.

Tian Tian and Yang Guang – their names mean sweetie and sunshine – are a breeding pair and Chinese officials and the zoo hope they will defy the species's normal reluctance to mate by producing young, which would catapult the couple to worldwide celebrity.

FedEx, equally alert to the marketing opportunities, will be flying them in on a specially equipped Boeing 777 with customised "panda livery", branded the Panda Express.

The pandas already have their own tartan, a largely black and white design with an "overcheck" of red and a streak of green – a product which is likely to play a major part in the zoo's marketing campaign.

They also have a small supply of locally-grown bamboo, harvested from several sites dotted around the zoo, supplemented by regular air-freighted shipments of bamboo from a German firm which grows it outside Amsterdam.

Inevitably, there will be "panda cams" with two discreetly positioned video cameras streaming live footage from inside their enclosure on the internet.

However, it will be at least two weeks before Tian Tian and Yang Guang are unveiled properly to the public. Their keepers and vets, advised by Chinese experts, will allow them to acclimatise and settle in before opening their enclosure to viewing.

To cope with the expected surge in public interest, the zoo will use a booking system to control the crowds, who will be guided through the "panda experience" in groups. Edinburgh will be the eighth zoo in the west to care for giant pandas, one of the world's rarest species.

The pandas were due to arrive earlier this summer after five years of discreet diplomacy and courting of Chinese officials, and then intense preparations to convert an old gorilla enclosure into an appropriate home for the pair.

The deal to lend them to the zoo for 10 years was confirmed in January when a Chinese government delegation arrived in the UK to seal £2.6bn worth of trade and investment deals, including funding to secure the Grangemouth oil refinery near Edinburgh.

Liu Xiaoming, the Chinese ambassador to the UK, said next Sunday's delivery of the pandas "represents the growing scientific ties between China and Britain". He said this went beyond conservation, and touched on science, culture and education.

"Knowing pandas also means understanding more about their home country of China. This opens the way for people across Britain to explore the Chinese traditions, people, its society and economy," he said. "More importantly, this is an excellent window into grasping China's commitment to peaceful development, desire for co-operation and quest for harmony with the world."

Alison MacLean, the zoo's team leader for the pandas, spent three weeks with Tian Tian and Yang Guang recently getting to know the animals. She said the pandas would live separately in different parts of the enclosure until the female, Tian Tian, was ready to mate.

But panda mating is a tricky business: the females are generally only fertile for four days a year, and then only ready to mate for 24 to 48 hours. "They will be kept separate and will only be brought together when the female is in season: that's a very short window of opportunity," MacLean said.

She added that both animals were "enchanting". She has 25 years of experience, and now specialises in large carnivores and bears, but said the pandas were very unusual. "They're quite incredible and unlike anything I have worked with before," she said.

They use part of their wrist joint like a thumb, so can grasp things with their paws as if they had hands like primates. "They're just so different, the way they move about, the way they sit down and the way they grasp things," MacLean said.

The panda project will be an immense relief to the zoo and its owners. It has had a series of problems with finances and poor visitor numbers recently, and an embarrassing controversy over allegations of misconduct by senior staff linked to another high-profile project with its new primates centre.

Hugh Roberts, the zoo's chief executive, said the pandas would bring "massive benefits" to the zoo and the UK by supporting panda conservation and its science and education programmes.

"We have been looking forward to this moment for five years now, since we first embarked on this epic journey to bring the giant pandas to Scotland," he said. "The arrival of Tian Tian and Yang Guang is an historic occasion for the zoo, for Scotland, and for the UK as a whole."